With The Ronettes in the 1960s, singer Ronnie Spector virtually defined the term “girl group” for posterity.

The three-member vocal group had five Top 40 hits 1963-64, including “Baby, I Love You,” "(The Best Part of) Breakin’ Up” and “Be My Baby,” which reached No. 2, and in 1999 was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

But 55 years later, some of the group’s best-remembered and best-loved songs were the Christmas tunes it recorded for legendary producer Phil Spector’s 1963 multi-artist compilation disc “A Christmas Gift for You” — “Frosty The Snowman,” “I Saw Momma Kissing Santa Claus” and “Sleigh Ride.”

So when Ronnie Spector decided to perform under The Ronettes name for the first time in 40 years this year, she decided to make the comeback a Christmas show.

“I’d been [performing] under my name for the past 29 years, but I decided to bring the Ronettes back into my show. Why? It’s fun, and I want to have fun on stage,” Spector, 75, says in an email interview.

“You know, I have all these Christmas songs that get played on the radio, but Christmas only comes once a year, and I love those songs, and I love Christmas.”

The show, which comes to Musikfest Cafe in Bethlehem on Dec. 12, is a multimedia presentation, with video, stories and “of course I have a few treats for the holidays,” Spector says.

“What’s it like? Well, no one else has a show like ours, that I can tell you,” she says. “We started building the show, and it got bigger … and now it’s in a really good place. The songs, the visuals and the stories all fit together. People love it. And I get to sing my Christmas songs, along with my other hits.”

Those other hits Spector refers to made The Ronettes legendary.

The trio — its other members were Spector’s older sister, Estelle Bennett, and their cousin, Nedra Talley — was a family act that was discovered at an amateur show at the Apollo Theatre in its native New York.

But after having little success with a tiny record label, they were signed by Phil Spector and released “Be My Baby” in 1963.

The song peaked at No. 2 and got The Ronettes on a tour with Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars. The group’s success inspired an era of female vocal groups — and even reportedly inspired The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson to write a tribute to them that became that group’s hit “Don’t Worry Baby.”

In 1999, “Be My Baby” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and in 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked it No. 22 on its list of Greatest Songs of All Time. In 2006 the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry, and in 2017, Billboard chose it the No. 1 Greatest Girl Group Song of All Time.

“We brought attitude into rock ’n’ roll for women — passion,” Spector says. “And stylistically we brought the look of the street to the stage before anyone else did. There were no biracial groups then, and we were a rock group, we got the audience up.”

She notes that The Ronettes were part of The Beatles’ last tour, and that “a bunch of other performers, from Jimi Hendrix to Springsteen to Alice Cooper, asked me to sing with them.”

The follow up to “Be My Baby” — “Baby I Love You,” released late the same year — also charted in the Top 10.

“A Christmas Gift for You” was released a month later. The album become a holiday classic, and The Ronettes’ “Sleigh Bells” has become the classic version. Its version of “Frosty the Snowman” was included on Rolling Stone magazine’s Top 10 Greatest Rock ’n’ Roll Christmas songs.

The Ronettes released just one original album, 1964’s “Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica.” Veronica is Ronnie Spector’s given name. It had two more hits, both in 1964 — “(The Best Part of) Breaking Up” and “Walkin’ in the Rain,” which won a Grammy Award in 1965 and which Rolling Stone also included on its greatest songs list.

The group broke up in 1967, and Ronnie Spector famously married Phil Spector in 1968. (They divorced in 1974; she skips questions about him in the email interview).

After the divorce, Ronnie Spector revived The Ronettes with two different members and toured through the 1970s. She went onto a solo career in which she released five solo discs, starting with 1980’s “Siren.”

In 1986, “Be My Baby” was sampled in the Eddie Money 1986 No. 1 hit “Take Me Home Tonight,” reviving Spector’s career. She released the album “Unfinished Business” in 1987, then two more discs.

The Ronettes were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.

Spector’s most recent disc was 2016’s “English Heart,” which was her first disc in a decade. She covered a variety of classic songs such as The Kinks’ “Tired of Waiting,” The Beatles’ “I’ll Follow the Sun” and The Bee Gees’ “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.”

“I was recording music that was created at a special time in my life,” Spector says. “I was right in the middle of the British Invasion, toured with all the groups from the Stones and the Yardbirds to the Kinks and on and on. So what we did was make an intimate recording, like whispering in your ear, of great Brit invasion songs.”

Asked why it took so long to record another album, Spector says, “I don’t like recording unless I really like the material and the producer. And recording today is so different. Music just doesn’t mean what it use to mean. I hate to say that, but it’s true.”

She apparently doesn’t have new music in the works, but says there’s a new song in the show.

“It’s a new Christmas song we put in that people love,” Spector says. “It’s “a doo-wop thing, and of course being from New York, I know how to doo-wop!”

Asked what influence she thinks The Ronettes have had on music, Spector says, “It’s better for you to tell people how much I influenced singers. I don’t know, I just love to perform.”

But she says, “ Amy Winehouse seemed to be influenced by me. She said it, and her mom told me.”

Asked whether it surprises her that The Ronettes’ classic songs have stayed so popular and so influential, 55 years later, she responds, “Of course it does.”

“No one thought for a second that rock ’n’ roll would be here in 2018.”